Mexico to join Pacific trade talks

Mexico is to join trans-Pacific trade negotiations, a stepping-stone toward a major regional trade deal, Mexican president Felipe Calderon and his US counterpart, Barack Obama, announced Monday.Mexico has been invited to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks with nine other nations, which together account for more than a quarter of world economic output.Announcing the move Calderon described the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as perhaps the greatest opportunity for growth in a decade and said it would bring a jobs windfall for Mexicans.

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As expected, the US and Canadian governments announced today that Canada would join the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. (To get caught up, Peter Clark has some great backstory on the recent machinations.) First up with the good news was Canadian PM Harper:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is expected to announce U.S. support for Mexico to formally join negotiations on a regional free trade agreement for the Asia Pacific, industry sources said on Monday. Obama, who is in Los Cabos, Mexico for the Group of 20 nations meeting, is holding talks with Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday morning. U.S. and Canadian industry sources said they expected Obama to announce on Monday that the United States supports Mexico's bid to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact. A spokeswoman for the U.S. ...

Beijing (AFP) - A Pacific Rim summit on Saturday voiced cautious support for a vast free-trade zone proposal being pushed by China in the face of reported resistance from the United States, which is promoting its own regional trade pact.

You know it’s bad when parties who aren’t at the negotiating table can tell a deal is going pear-shaped.
The Chinese have good cause for being interested in the toxic, inaccurately labeled trade treaty known as the TransPacific Partnership. The big reason is that it is designed to be an “anybody but China” deal, in order to crimp the growing power and influence of the Middle Kingdom over its neighbors.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barriers to farm imports in Japan and Canada will be one focus of free trade talks with Pacific Rim countries this weekend, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said on Thursday.

U.S. trade policy, hobbled for years by partisan bickering, has been reinvigorated with a new level of ambition and scope. President Barack Obama, considered a trade skeptic when he first came into office in 2008, is now pursuing free trade zones spanning both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.

Back when Japan announced that it was interested in joining the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations - which currently include the United States, current US FTA partners Australia, Chile, Peru, and Singapore, new FTA partners Brunei, Malaysia, New Zealand and Vietnam - I noted that admitting the economic power and close US ally was a no-brainer.